Re: You rate savannah.gnu.org at A? AYFKM?

[Pau Amma]

On 2022-03-01 04:24, Richard Stallman wrote:
>   > Free software existed long before the FSF
>
> That's right.  I used free programs and developed some, in the 1970s.
> When I talk about the history of our community, that's what I start 
> with.
> See https://gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html.
>
> That was free software, but it wasn't the free software movement.

It definitely included thriving, organized, collaborative efforts 
supporting complex software ecosystems. Those definitely qualify as 
movements. I believe I mentioned SHARE. See 
https://www.share.org/About/About-Us/History and note:
- in the 1960s: the Share Operating system and its compiler and debugger
- in the 1970s: "enhancements of the computer for every user in the 
installation whether they be system programmers, application 
programmers, computer operators, or non-programmers is today's reality."

>                                               and
>   > there were philosophical underpinnings to it before you developed 
> your
>   > own version.
>
> People who worked on free software had various thoughts about it.
> But they didn't think of it as a movement aiming for a moral goal.

Do you have any evidence of that? Specifically, that they didn't have 
clearly articulated goals aiming at furthering what they saw as the 
common good and behaved consistently with achieving these goals?

Incidentally, a more neutral and less emotionally charged word than 
"moral goal" like "principled stance" doesn't fit the situation of both 
those and the FSF? "Moral" has the additional baggage that principles 
underpinning it are good, and therefore other sets of organizing and 
operating principle, equally valid and equally conducive to worthy 
results useful to the community, aren't as good as your own, because you 
chose not to bestow the qualifier "moral" on them.

For more on that topic, see 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-motivation/, 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism-ethics/, 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/, 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-responsibility/, and 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grounds-moral-status/.

> That's what I started.

That's what you you call what you claim you started. But:
- Whether you started anything, as opposed to forking an existing 
movement then pretending it didn't exist before you is, looking at it 
charitably, dubious.
- You calling it that doesn't make it so absent a priori or a posteriori 
grounding in consensual reality: that is, did enough people agree, 
before you settled on that name, that it fitted the concept, or failing 
that, did people observing your attempted embodiment of that concept 
think it was plausibly one and do they still think so now? (That last 
part is critically important.)

> That's what I call the free software _movement_.

I will keep in mind that you map that noun phrase to an alleged concept 
and rely on that deictic in interpreting future statements you make, 
should there be any.
> You cited some correct facts, but you falsely accused me of denying
> them.

I stated my belief that your observed behavior is inconsistent with 
acceptance of them. If you claim some of my statements went beyond that, 
feel free to specify which statements and what grounds you have to 
believe your claim about them is correct.

> You've stated opinions on some other points, To have a thoughtful
> discussion about them, people need to be willing to listen to others'
> arguments and consider them.  I'd consider your points, and present
> why I disagree, if you were willing to consider mine -- but you're
> not.

At a potluck buffet, someone may be willing to taste the potato salad 
despite not liking mayonnaise or pickles, and evaluate that specific 
potato salad on its own overall merits, but may at the same time, 
entirely reasonably, refuse to take a bite from a shit sandwich and 
instead toss it into the nearest garbage can without getting agreement 
from anyone, let alone from whoever brought it. In much the same way, 
I'm not obliged to give any consideration to arguments I see as fatally 
flawed or hypocritical beyond the barest minimum needed to list their 
fatal flaws or point out the hypocrisy in them.

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